Rebuilding Your Staff Team, Part 3 - Taking stock

The past few months have been exceptionally challenging for nursery managers. Each setting will have needed to make many changes to both its physical environment and operational procedures prior to welcoming children back. These may have been in the reorganisation of how space is used, what resources are available, the deployment of staff, how the routine is organised or how both the inside and outside environments are used to support children’s learning.

As a staff team, it is important to reflect on these changes collectively. What difference have they made? What has worked well? Why is this? What impact has it had on children’s play and interests in learning?

Although change is disruptive, it can often be positive and drive improvement. Now is a good time to reflect on how well things are working. There is no doubt that change is unsettling, and staff have been working under considerable pressure. However, now we should put appropriate actions in place to measure the difference and monitor the progress we have made.

Everyone involved

In my experience, leaders often take on responsibility for evaluating practice. I have seen lengthy action plans identifying areas for improvement. However, what part do staff play in this process? They are the ones who know the children best and can see the positive impact of some changes or identify what works less well.

In larger settings, operational changes may have a more positive impact in some areas but less in others. Therefore, staff working directly with the children need to contribute fully towards evaluating practice. Action plans and the process of evaluation need to link fully together. There is little value in setting improvement areas if you do not have robust systems in place to monitor their effectiveness.

Change and improvement will happen far more quickly, and be fully embedded at an earlier stage, if all staff know what is needed. For example, how well do one-to-one discussions with staff focus on the setting’s improvement plans? If there are targets to improve the number of children achieving better in their literacy development, are these discussed with individual staff?

As an inspector, I have often noted that settings’ development plans do not link with staff development records. The two need to go together for change to happen more quickly and for improvement to be sustained (see case study).

What we’ve learned

In the first two articles of this series, I focused on the importance of discussing staff well-being, reviewing staff training needs and reflecting on how staff reassess children’s learning. What have we learnt from this? What training and support have leaders given their staff? What form did this take and how effective was it? Has it made a positive difference? During one-to-one discussions and team meetings, how do staff now report they feel? Why is this? Can some of these new ways of working be embedded as ‘usual’ practice now?

Reflection is a powerful tool. Reviewing what has changed, why this is, and what now works well, will significantly help leaders to embed change positively and sustain the improvements that have been seen. Some settings may well still be adapting and re-adapting their practice. New cohorts of children starting, and those returning to the setting after a long break, may be finding it harder to settle.

As we know, what works well for one child may not work for another. Leaders and staff continually juggle their practice to find effective solutions.

Changes to the routine

Following lockdown, parents may also need a different level of support. They need to be confident that their child will be safe, and the procedures they were familiar with may have changed.

Always explain change to parents and help them understand why you are making adaptations. For example, if you have made changes to the drop-off/collection process, help parents fully understand why you are doing this. If staffing arrangements have changed, and shift patterns have been altered, always make sure parents understand these changes and know exactly who is going to be looking after their child each day.

Covid-19 has altered so many aspects of our work. Let us focus on how we make change a positive process for all those involved. The key now is to look forward, not back.

Remember, the process of evaluation should not be complicated and time-consuming. You need simple, structured measures that clearly inform you and your team what is working well and what could still be improved further.

CASE STUDY: clear objectives

Kimi is the manager of a small day nursery. She leads a team of 12 staff. During lockdown, Kimi fully reviewed the setting’s improvement plan, which the local authority advisor helped her to create.

Like many other settings, to re-open safely, Kimi and her team have had to implement many operational changes. Kimi has added these to the improvement plan and will monitor the effectiveness of these closely.

She has amended her plan to include ‘success criteria’, giving her clear objectives to measure the impact of the changes she implements. Kimi noted that one of the targets was to improve the provision for boys’ writing. This was because tracking records noted that boys were consistently achieving less well than girls. This had been a trend for the past few years.

Kimi noted that she had not recorded any progress against this action prior to lockdown. She was aware that it was a priority area, and staff knew this, but no specific measures were in place to identify what improvements, if any, were being made.

Kimi and her team reflected on this during an online meeting. Each staff member considered the learning needs of their key children. They quickly identified which boys showed less interest in writing and were not making as much progress in this area.

Kimi gave a presentation to help staff understand how boys’ writing skills can be developed through play. She also fully reviewed each staff member’s development plan and devised a target to include in their one-to-one discussions. Since the setting has re-opened, Kimi has carried out observations of staff practice and has focused on how well individual staff are targeting boys’ writing skills. She has noted there has been some significant progress and staff are now more confident in supporting boys’ physical development and mark-making skills through play.

Staff say they feel more involved in making the necessary improvements now as they fully understand the part they can play. Kimi says it has provided a useful way in which to focus areas for improving teaching. Individual targets for staff link seamlessly with the setting’s improvement plan so that staff can clearly see the part they play.

By fully understanding the improvement area, staff take responsibility for their practice and are highly motivated to make the necessary changes. Kimi also states it has made the evaluation process so much more streamlined as targets are clearly linked and are much easier to measure.

Jo Caswell is a former senior manager with Ofsted and is director of JLC Early Years Consultancy.